New Provenance Research Project: Nazi‑Looted Books? A Systematic Provenance Review of the ZfL Library Holdings
During the ZfL’s move in the summer of 2023, a small collection of French-language books was discovered in the library. Parts of this collection were verifiably Nazi-looted property. Based on the well‑founded assumption that the ZfL library may contain further books that were confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution, a provenance research project was launched to systematically examine suspicious holdings.
The project Nazi-Looted Books? A Systematic Provenance Review of the ZfL Library Holdings, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, began its work on June 1, 2026. It is being carried out by provenance researcher Anne Haeming. The project is led by Dirk Naguschewski, who is responsible for knowledge transfer and communication at the ZfL. The one-year project is supported by student assistant Lea Weiß.
As part of the research, the entire ZfL book collection published prior to 1945—approximately 5,000 volumes—will be examined for critical provenance. Combined with existing accession records, this examination will illuminate the diverse acquisition routes of the ZfL and its predecessor institutions, beginning with the Institute for German Language and Literature, founded in 1952 in the GDR as part of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. As part of a physical examination, the project involves documenting all books and their provenance characteristics both photographically and in writing, and incorporating the results into relevant provenance research catalogues and databases. The goal is to identify items confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution so they can be returned to their rightful heirs.
In June 2025, the ZfL contributed 93 volumes to the restitution of a total of 221 books to the heirs of Jewish Parisian lawyer Henry Torrès. The return took place at the Recovered Memories Conference, which was organized by the French Commission for the Restitution of Property and the Compensation of Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliations (CIVS) in Paris.